An embodiment relates generally to reliable data message delivery for an ad hoc vehicular network.
Vehicle to vehicle communications are typically used to notify other vehicles of events that are occurring which may directly or indirectly affect vehicles traveling along a road. Vehicles disseminate messages containing information to other vehicles within a broadcast range for notification of the various driving conditions. In the case of vehicle safety applications, the objective of message dissemination is to reduce accidents by forewarning vehicle drivers of such conditions. When a vehicle receives a notification message, the receiving vehicle attempts to re-broadcast the message to other vehicles within its broadcasting range for alerting other vehicles of the existing condition.
The drawback with the above described system is the flooding of messages (e.g., broadcast storm) within the network. When the majority of the vehicles within a broadcast range attempt to re-broadcast messages, the wireless channel becomes overloaded, resulting in packet collision. The result of such an overload is performance degradation that affects communication reliability. Moreover, vehicles traveling behind those vehicles broadcasting the information that are outside of the broadcast range will not obtain such warnings.